Denver Municipal Election Gets Mobile Voting Courtesy of Voatz

Active-duty military and overseas voters will be able to use their mobile phones to vote in Denver’s upcoming municipal election. The pilot program will utilize a blockchain-based voting platform designed by Voatz, which previously provided blockchain technology for mobile voting in municipal and general elections in West Virginia.

“Our democracy is broken. That only changes if turnout
soars,” said Tusk Philanthropies Founder and CEO Bradley Tusk. “Blockchain
makes it secure and feasible. The Denver Elections Division deserves a
tremendous amount of credit for being one of the first to implement an
innovative and convenient solution to fix the underlying issues in our
government.”

“We believe this technology has the potential to make voting
easier and more secure not only for our active duty military and overseas
citizens, but also for voters with disabilities,” added Jocelyn Bucaro, Denver’s
Deputy Director of Elections.

The pilot is a bipartisan initiative, and will be compliant with the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act. Qualified Denver voters will be able request and cast their absentee ballots beginning on March 23rd until polls close at 7pm on election day (May 7th). Authentication will be handled through the Voatz app, which will also allow voters to confirm that their votes were properly recorded.

“The application of blockchain in our election system
provides for secure, auditable, transparent and accurate counting of ballots
and the increased integrity of our election system,” said Vance Brown, the CEO
of the National Cybersecurity Center.

Voatz received $2.2M in seed funding at the beginning of 2018, and has successfully conducted more than 30 elections across various institutions. The tamper-proof nature of blockchain technology could be revolutionary for democracy, especially given the allegations of election fraud in the past few months. Blockchain could potentially eliminate the risk of human error and would make voting less of a hassle so more people would be able to participate.